1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of stationery, books, office and school products generally. More specifically the present invention relates to a notebook having a plurality of pages forming a pad and bound together at a page binder edge by a ring or spiral binder, and with a binder mounting shaft secured substantially parallel with and spaced outwardly from the support surface by shaft mounting structures. The shaft mounting structures preferably are legs of U-shaped wire and the mounting shaft is the wire segment interconnecting the legs. The notebook is constructed to permit the sequential passage of the forward-most, or first page through the space between the shaft and support surface to become the last page in the pad. The rotated page becomes the last page in the pad, rather than merely a folded back first page. First page rotation exposes and causes the second page to become the first page, which then may be rotated to the back of the pad to expose and cause the next page to become the first page. This page rotation may be performed indefinitely.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There have long been notebooks including note pads for containing a series of bound pages and arranged so that each page can be folded behind the pad after use. A problem with these prior pads has been that the cover must be folded behind the pad, and then pages folded behind the cover, so that pages rotated behind the pad are obstructed by the cover or other notebook parts from rejoining the pad. Then, to close the notebook so that the cover is exposed outside the pad, the used pages must be folded back on top of unused pages. Where the pad is mounted on a support surface, the support surface itself obstructs and prevents rotation of the pad first page to become the pad last page. As a result, when the user wishes to begin writing on the next available page, he or she must flip past all the used pages to reach it.
Holton, U.S. Pat. No. 703,260, issued on Jun. 24, 1902, discloses a tablet including a stack of writing sheets and a one piece binder in the form of two spaced apart binder rings interconnected by a connecting rod. The rings have flat back portions to rest on a table and curved front portions around which the sheets are rotated after use. The sheets cannot rotate all the way around the rings to reach the back of the stack, however, because the ring connecting rod would stop them.
Hackmann, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 808,652, issued on Jan. 2, 1906, teaches a note book having a binder similar to that of Holton. Two circular binder rings are interconnected by a straight rod portion, which would prevent full sheet rotation just as in Holton. Thaw, U.S. Pat. No. 3,108,823, issued on Oct. 29, 1963 for a paper securement device, includes binder rings mounted onto a backboard which can be opened to load and reload paper. Pianta, U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,410, issued on Dec. 16, 1980 reveals a stationary booklet having cardboard covers and a refillable binder made up of tubular rings passing through slots in the cover and sheets, which can be split longitudinally and reconnected. Zane, U.S. Pat. No. 5,503,486, issued on Apr. 2, 1996, discloses a notebook and notebook cover assembly. None of these devices appear to permit the full rotation of sheets from the front to the back of a pad.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a surface mounted notebook including a pad of writing pages which permits sequential rotation of the forward most page past the mounting surface to the back of the pad, to become the last page in the pad, so that the next page to be used is always the first page in the notebook.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such a surface mounted notebook in which the support surface may be a backboard, a protective notebook retaining box, a building wall, a counter top, an appliance housing, or virtually any other convenient surface.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a surface mounted notebook which may include an existing conventional spiral or ring bound notebook.
It is finally an object of the present invention to provide such a surface mounted notebook which is simple in design and inexpensive to manufacture.
The present invention accomplishes the above-stated objectives, as well as others, as may be determined by a fair reading and interpretation of the entire specification.
A notebook is provided including a support structure having a support surface; a number of pages each having a page binder edge and a page free edge and a page length from the page binder edge to the page free edge, and having at least two page binder holes adjacent to the page binder edge, the pages being stacked sequentially face to face to form a pad so that corresponding page binder holes register with each other; a binder passing through registering the page binder holes and binder axial passageway; a mounting shaft extending through the binder axial passageway; and at least one shaft mounting and spacing structure connected to the mounting shaft and connected to the support surface and spacing the mounting shaft outwardly from the support surface a distance less than the page length and positioning the mounting shaft to be substantially parallel with the support surface, and thereby defining between the mounting shaft and the support surface a page passing slot; so that the page free edge of each forward most page in the pad can be arched over the remainder of the forward most page, fitted into and rotated about the binder entirely through the page passing slot and placed against the back most page of the pad.
The support surface may be a forward surface of a substantially rigid backboard. The support surface alternatively is a box back wall of a containment box including at least two box side walls connected to and extending forwardly from the box back wall and including a box front wall which is detachable from at least one of the box side walls to open the containment box and provide access to the pages. The support surface may be a box back wall of a containment box including at least two box side walls connected to and extending forwardly from the box back wall and including a box front wall which is detachable from at least one of the box side walls to open the containment box and provide access to the pages, where the shaft mounting and spacing structure includes at least one box side wall to which the mounting shaft is secured and from which the mounting shaft extends forwardly of the box back wall a certain distance.
The box front wall preferably includes a front wall peripheral flange which fits around the box side wall. The box front wall optionally pivots from a box hinge structure connecting the box front wall to the box side wall. The shaft mounting structure preferably includes two wire legs of a U-shaped wire and the mounting shaft is a segment of the U-shaped wire interconnecting the wire legs. The binder is optionally a spiral wire threaded through the registering page holes to hold the pages and the cover together while permitting page rotation. The binder alternatively includes a series of ring-shaped wires each fitted through one registering series of the page holes to hold the pages together and permit page rotation.